Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @07:03AM
from the freedom-of-the-press dept.

An anonymous reader was the first to write with news that Groklaw is shutting down: "There is now no shield from forced exposure. Nothing in that parenthetical thought list is terrorism-related, but no one can feel protected enough from forced exposure any more to say anything the least bit like that to anyone in an email, particularly from the U.S. out or to the U.S. in, but really anywhere. You don't expect a stranger to read your private communications to a friend. And once you know they can, what is there to say? Constricted and distracted. That's it exactly. That's how I feel. So. There we are. The foundation of Groklaw is over. I can't do Groklaw without your input. I was never exaggerating about that when we won awards. It really was a collaborative effort, and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate."Why it's a big deal.

It was a myth, a good PR. The truth is probably the USA were never more, or less, democratic and free than most of western europe state. Just your run of the mill western democratic country. Not bad, but not the best either : just one among many good country to live in.

It was a myth, a good PR. The truth is probably the USA were never more, or less, democratic and free than most of western europe state. Just your run of the mill western democratic country. Not bad, but not the best either : just one among many good country to live in.

Not really good PR, just standard. Every other country has it too. If you live in France then you're told France is the best, if you live in the UK then you're told UK is the best... it sometimes seems that Americans buy into their own publicity a little too easily but I'm sure there are worse national traits than self-deception.

The only people I ever see acting like their country is "the best" overall are Americans. A country can be "best" in certain areas, but I don't really see any one country as being "the best" overall. I was brought up in Scotland, and I think I'll continue to live here because 1) It's pretty and temperate, 2) Australia has too many deadly creepy crawlies, 3) the US is too smug.

The US government has been corrupt for a long time. The difference now is that Manning and Snowden have basically pulled back the veil of secrecy enough to see that the Wonderful Wizard is nothing more than a crotchety old man. Not even a nice one at that. We have been on a slide since the 1950s. The only way we came to prominence is that the rest of the world leveled itself and somehow, sans Pearl Harbor, we remained untouched. What do you get when you have only one functioning economy in the world? Hello new World Power. The Soviets worked hard to bring themselves backup up to speed and quickly became the second Super Power. The Soviets had a shoddy structure though and fell to pieces because of that. Because of this, the US has lost it's primary enemy and looks around the world for others.
Compare the US to Rome, and the history lines up so perfectly it's scary. Look at how the past two presidents tried to take power away from the senate. Look at how we spend more money on entertainment than we do on science or any other industry that will advance us. Look at the type of entertainment we have today where what we watch has little relevance tomorrow rather than something we will watch and cherish years or centuries from now.
We are in the bread and circuses phase of the empire. Everyone is poor, but continue to be entertained, so they don't care. Religion is continuing to come into prominence again as it did in the the fall of the Roman empire. The rest of the world is advancing and our ideas are quickly becoming outdated. Our influence on the world is waning and we have very little to show for it. Other than a flag on the moon marking one of our pinnacle moments of advancement.

The neat thing about the English language is that it has it's own built-in excuse for massively varying dialects and accents. Adding "ish" on the end of a word in English generally means "bares some vague resemblance to, but probably isn't actually the same as". Kinda like saying "Well, what we did was legal-ish", or "it looks kinda brownish". When we say we're speaking English, we're saying what we are speaking is "kinda sorta vaguely, but not quite exactly like what they speak in England". Thus, what they speak in Newfoundland is totally Engl-ish.

Technically, under those rules, Quebec "French" is also more Engl-ish than it is France-ish, but don't tell them that, it'll just upset them.

Yes, I did completely make that up on the spot, but it's a real-ish explanation.

Funny shit. I'm old enough to remember an age when the USA was better than the USSR because the USSR, (being a totalitarian communist dictatorship), had more people, per capita, in prisons, than we did. They taught us this in schools less than 30 years ago.

Funny when I was growing up in the old Soviet Union, we were told day in and day out that Soviet Union is the best, and the Soviet People are the greatest, and the greatest brother among them was the (ethnic) Russian people.
And that we were more free than anyone else, richer than anyone else, and more fair than anyone else. Oh, and that the average boys and girls in America live on the streets and governed by the evil tzar whose name is Reagan and who can not sleep at night tossing and turning just trying to think of the new ways to kill innocent Soviet children...

I was talking specifically about online btw - you only really see Americans acting like their country is the best, or that it used to be - or "should be" - the best for some reason.

There's a big difference between "nationalist pride", and thinking your country is "the best". Scotland never wins any sports tournaments, and doesn't really have much of an appeal to those from other English speaking countries, outside of being a nice place for a holiday. Most Scots folk aren't really under any illusion as to what the rest of the world thinks of Scotland.

I don't really hold that much store in nationalist pride anyway, it sounds far too much like being patriotic, which is just brainwashing at its finest.

If there's one thing that really annoys me on people from US, it's talking about Europeans. There's no such thing (no matter how much the European Union denies that). Europe is a geographical group of ~50 countries that are very (very very) different in all aspects. Did you know that Azerbaijan, Belarus or Georgia are European countries? (I have nothing against those countries, I'm just trying to explain that assuming all countries are like France, UK or Germany is pretty much nonsense). It's like talking about Americans when actually talking about people from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Canada because thay all live on continents with "America" in the name.

Even this "We are the best!" bullshit is present only in some of the countries. That does not mean the people in the other countries are not proud of their country, they just don't treat the others as crap. I'd bet it works the same way in the US, btw - most people genuiely proud of their country/state and a few nationalist loonies (which get the most in foreign news, so the impression is quite distorted).

If there's one thing that really annoys me on people from US, it's talking about Europeans. There's no such thing (no matter how much the European Union denies that). Europe is a geographical group of ~50 countries that are very (very very) different in all aspects. Did you know that Azerbaijan, Belarus or Georgia are European countries? (I have nothing against those countries, I'm just trying to explain that assuming all countries are like France, UK or Germany is pretty much nonsense). It's like talking about Americans when actually talking about people from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Canada because thay all live on continents with "America" in the name.

As an American living in Europe, I could not agree more with that statement. In fact, one of the bigger unifying forces seems to be disdain for the European Union and making fun of the French. (BTW Israel is also an associated country of the EU and I doubt anyone is thinking of Israelis when they say "European.") The idea that a Brit has more in common with a Finn than a collection of treaties their respective governments signed is just wrong. However, this was a difficult concept for me, as an American, to wrap my head around simply because countries here are so tiny (and have such long histories)... they're the size of states, they all belong to a big "union," therefore EU = US is an easy shorthand. It is really difficult to see things from the other side of the Atlantic until you spend a few years here because European countries don't export their culture (e.g., TV and movies) the same way as the US.

Your "European" comparison is valid for the US as well. We have ~50 states that vary quite a bit. Many differences within each state. I, for example, think the US has a lot of problems, many things I hate to see here. But what I see here that I hate is often even more developed in other countries. Countries I where I have friends and enjoy visiting. Dislike American surveillance? Try London (I know, I know, a city, not a nation). Think America is a police state? Try Singapore.

I value liberty more than security. Most of you don't. A totalitarian state is desired by a shocking (to me, at least) number of people in the world.

What I hate about America isn't some dumbass waving a giant foam hand with a finger pointing up and yelling "We're number one!, USA, USA, USA! We're better than the Euro weenies!" That's merely rustic. What I hate is watching my admittedly imperfect country, perhaps the only modern country in the world founded on liberty, becoming *like* the rest of the world, even countries I love to visit.

Did you know that the United States is made up of many states that are overall very different and spread across a wide geographical area? We even have our own separate laws. I am from Missouri and find it frustrating to be lumped in with Texans.

You must not have met any Germans
I had a German teacher years ago. She walked into the class and asked what the first thing that came to our minds when Germany was mentioned was. I jumped in with Rammstein (the band) a microsecond before the rest of the class jumped in with Hitler. I was on her favorites list for the rest of the year.
The Germans don't put out flags outside their houses, don't send armies off to strange lands, don't do national anthems or celebrate Germany (except in soccer games). Spanish are rather smug about Columbus etc. but at least they let the South Americans into their country far more easily than US does. All of Eastern Europe is full of un-smug countries too -- if anything their pride sounds like pride a Philadelphian might take in their city than a nationalistic one. Dutch are easygoing, Nordic countries are rather welcoming (if you eat their food). OK, The French are a bit smug (or don't speak English very well - can't say for sure), and the British are rather proud of their colonial past but otherwise most of Europe is rather quiet.

First there is really big difference between countries about the privacy question. For example in Switzerland (where I live) the privacy question is far more mature than in the USA. It's not a government vs peoples fight, but a normal subject where change have to be voted by all citizens. In the USA the government is so powerful that it can do almost anything, especially using his agencies, without strong opposition.

Secondly, the USA is by far the country that have the most used his massive commercial and political influence to impose to others countries to destroy the privacy rights of there citizens. Many non-USA peoples are upset about that, really. This is not an hazard if now the USA is considered an evil county about privacy and that some others non-USA country is now regarded as more free than the "used to be free" USA.

For many peoples, USA was the way to go until the end of the 20 century. Recent release of documents have show that the USA success was based on one of the most massive manipulation of information and manipulation of others governments. It's normal that there is a reaction about that, internally and externally. I really don't known how the USA will evolve from that point. Regarding everyone as a suspect is certainly not a way to build a bright future.

There is national pride in just about any country, however I really don't think the American superiority complex should be dismissed based on that. The very fact the question of whether America is the greatest or not is controversial and seriously asked in the media gives an interesting insight.

The show 'Newsroom' starts with a 'shocking' scene where a student asks what makes America the greatest country in the world. If/when that happened in real life no one would be remotely surprised. When someone answers with "it isn't" THAT would be a shock!

America is probably the closest any country can come to claiming to be the greatest without looking entirely ridiculous. The problem is that when people think they are greatest they dismiss the views of others, believe they know the truth and should be allowed to do what they want because they know best.

Most western democracies don't have their children pledging allegiance to the flag on a daily basis. American exceptionalism is pretty exceptional as well, most western democracies don't claim such a thing for their countries.

At one point in time the US was more free then other countries. This is because the size and scopr of the federal government has traditionally been constrained and limited for the most part. The cold war changed a lot of that ss well did the hippy movement of the 60's and the economic colapse in the 70's. Government expanded rapidly trying to "PROTECT" us from then communidt russians and the people started demanding more of the federal government which they were more then happy to address as long as it could increase the powet it held over the people.

This isn't party specific either. Even when a party runs against it as part of their platform, once they get power then make it worse but different.

The US has seen many protests. Many people have moved there, even from the UK and other European countries, for freedom. Look at Salmon Rushdie.No, this is relatively new and your attitude doesn't help.We need large number of people showing their indignation, not sitting at home saying "it was probably always like this"

It may not be a case of wimping out. Lavabit was slapped with a gagging clause by the US spy agencies and told that it would have to allow the NSA to spy on its customers on its behalf without telling them. Lavabit decided to shut down rather than act as a mole for the NSA, and was then charged by the Feds for not spying on their behalf. It looks very much like the same thing may be happening with Groklaw. Groklaw is quite outspoken on behalf of freedom of speech, openness, and transparency and therefore critical of the NSA's activities. The US spy agencies are currently in the process of intimidating and shutting down any free speech that exposes NSA lawbreaking or is embarrassing to the US spy agencies. Groklaw would therefore be a prime target. I can't help wondering whether Groklaw has received similar legal threats under cover of a gagging order. Certainly there were many posts criticizing the NSA on Groklaw, and I wonder whether the NSA asked Groklaw to provide access to the NSA to spy on its emails and posters in order to intimidate and silence them. That must surely be the only explanation for the sudden shut down and the freezing of discussion posts.

Very doubtful. Groklaw doesn't represent sensitive communications on the scale that the NSA or CIA would care about. PJ is delusional if she really thinks anyone in the government gives a damn about her site and the emails between her and her collaborators.

Having started browsing Groklaw again after several years absence, it is my personal observation that Groklaw is a pale shadow of its former self. PJ's posts lately seem like painfully-biased missives against the companies that don't share her specific values (putting aside the fact that the companies she sides with don't either) as she willfully ignores the subtler details of every single issue she reports on in order to continue her angry screeds. That's not journalism. It's not even entertaining.

I think deep down, PJ knows this. And I think this closure is just a convenient excuse to get out. Good riddance, says me.

(And this is coming from someone who was very pro-Groklaw during the SCO saga).

It was a myth, a good PR. The truth is probably the USA were never more, or less, democratic and free than most of western europe state.

Today, Western Europe is about as democratic as the US because within living memory various countries had actual fascist governments overthrown by war or social change, and communist governments removed or communist movements thwarted either by war or social change. Collectively all of Europe is far freer today than it was 70 years ago. The US and UK have been free and democratic the whole time, now Western (and most of Eastern) Europe has joined them. Even formerly Soviet Russia is now freer even if there are some troubling trends. (And there is a country that is an exception [spiegel.de]. And there is an ugly trend [telegraph.co.uk] that should be a relic of the past - will that curse never leave? )

So no, it isn't just PR. This is all subject to change if people forget or act unwisely.

You do realise that he didn't talk about today but of when the USA was founded?

You mean when only (slave owning) men (mostly of European descent) were allowed to vote?

That's not even a valid argument, and means nothing. All people originally started from tribes, yet a "tribal" is nothing but a politically correct word meaning "racist." The American colonists were no different, and started from a position of both oppressor and oppressed. Yes, they were dominated by racist male slave owners, and they took land by force from the natives, but they were still only a colony, governed from afar without input. They then revolted and create a democracy from the people they were. Even if it started as only a democracy of 30% of the population, any democracy was still a huge improvement because it allowed them to change.

What made them create the democracy the way they did was coming to an agreement that excluded tribal governance. The right to free speech. The right to freedom of religion. The right to assemble. The formation of a representational government. These are rights that protect individuals from the tribal behaviors of others.

Only a democracy was able to evolve to include the rest of the people, sometimes civilly, sometimes brutally, and never without controversy.

It would not have been possible to do this in the reverse order. They were governed by someone else, and would have been unable to make the social changes required to eliminate slavery first, or to grant blacks, natives, or women the vote. They themselves did not have their own government and did not have a vote in how to run their affairs.

So stop saying or thinking that our democracy was founded on racism. Our country was founded through the drive for self-determination, revolution, and democracy, with measures to protect against racism (the seeds were there, although they weren't implemented in that way at that time.) And it was only through democracy that it could be improved, and the racism reduced. But making such changes is an extremely tumultuous, hard, and slow process that takes overcoming centuries of cultural bias. Even today, a lot of people still want to live in a tribal society, and exclude anyone not of their tribe.

I feel PJ is making an important statement, more convincing than anything I've seen yet.

I don't find it convincing, particularly this bit: "there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate". Of course there is. Setup a forum on Tor, Freenet or some other darknet and collaborate there, then publish the results on the open web. Groklaw has a very technical demographics, almost anyone interested will know how to participate.

And that would change what? Considering the number of ISP:s that is under the NSAs thumb, you can pretty much assume that all three nodes that you use in Tor is monitored by the NSA and such they can simply do traffic analysis based on time and size of data packets. I wouldn't be too surprised if they have the capcity to inject extra data at the source ISP (say that they monitor www.groklaw.org and thus injects a large amount of extra data in the reply from the server by injecting them at the ISP-level so even Groklaw won't see it) then they can track where that extra large packet went eventually in case they didn't have access to all three nodes but only the source and destination.

What I can take away from this statement by PJ is that the powers that be already have their hands on the servers either by hook or by crook and although groklaw may be able to set up tor or any number of any other number of secure workarounds, the entire site is compromised at source, therefore making any further measures moot.

If I were PJ and the feds or whomever came down on me with a gagging order, a reaction and a message like this would be the only possibly-legal way of informing the users, although I wouldn't be surprised if repercussions weren't coming. Shifting the site outside of US jurisdiction, warning members or modifying access protocols to get around wiretapping would be directly against the terms of the gag order.

Now I'll go swap my tinfoil hat for a lead one.

Related aside: back when speed limits were introduced in the UK, the AA (Automobile Association) got in trouble for obstructing the police by using their scouts to warn drivers of speed checks in the area. So they introduced the slogan "If an AA patrol fails to salute you, please stop and ask why".

Indeed, and I can understand her feelings. I just wish she had chosen to fight instead. She sits at the focus of a pretty fair-sized, cooperative community rich in legal and technological expertise and the will to use it - I can't think of many others in such a strong position to make a stand. She long avoided politics on Groklaw, but this is going way beyond politics, this is an attack on the rule of law itself, and we're in dire need of champions while there's still some small hope of making a difference.

Perhaps she did some soul searching and found she was not champion enough for this challenge - I seem to remember she was shaken by some of the particularly ugly attacks and intimidation directed at her over the SCO saga, not that I blame her, and the opposition this time around is far more fearsome and insidious.

Farewell PJ, we'll miss you. And I at least will be hoping you change your mind.

It won't. Not until there is a war. And nobody wants a war.So I guess the only thing to say is this: welcome to the new world.

I think the funnier thing is the gun nuts who were always going crazy about how they will defend themselves from a tyrannic Britain now face a much worse enemy and sit around doing fuck all because they know they lost already.Yeah, you try shoot a tank with your peashooter. Good luck with that, son. Enjoy being shot with a drone in advance.

Cowards, spies, psychos and delusions, that is all America is now. No freedom here, Stranger.

It has been mentioned by observers outside the US, often enough to become a truism, that America is incapable of functioning without a war, whether declared or not. And history certainly shows that your illustrious leaders like nothing better than to start a nice shiny new war when the cracks in their domestic policy need papering over.

Did you expect the power to just surrender to a future where they don't matter anymore?

As you know more and more. As you recover what is rightly yours. As you take over the control of your own country. They will fight back. And they will bite and tear down your houses searching for traitors. And they will destroy you, and put you in jails, and kill many of you.

But you will prevail.

Because freedom only moves one way.

You're scared because you're the first ones. There's only darkness ahead. But you shouldn't be, because behind that darkness is the future that will look back and cheer at you as the freedom fighters of this century.

The thing is while most people apply the idea of a market failure to asymmetric incentives in economics where an outcome could be a net negative for everyone as a whole but a net positive for all the principle players such as both the business and its customers, it also applies to all forms of governance.

In democratic or representative republic forms of governance, the personal investment required to be an informed voter is a cost that is much greater than the benefit of actually making an informed vote. Part of this is due to a lot of noise within the available information, but it also has to do with the number of people that themselves are uniformed.

The upshot of this is that other uninformed voters creates an incentive to be an uninformed voter yourself, a self-sustaining entirely rational population of uninformed voters.

In a place where every email/SMS/tweet needs to look like a terrorist email/SMS/tweet, where every communication needs to have something forbidden attached to it, where every web page needs to go through a couple of proxies, where they cannot sift any useful information from the mass of data.

They ARE going to do this, it won't go away because a few people grumble. Time to decrease the signal/noise ratio to the point where it's unusable.

America is not a democracy [salon.com], if looks, smells and tastes like a plutocracy, then no matter the handwritten label you stamp over it, is not. That you (and hopely, most) are becoming aware of it is an improvement, in any case.

Given that PJ has been running Groklaw with almost no intermissions for just over 10 years, it's probably not fair to describe her as a gutless coward. If you can come up with a form of email encryption that you can guarantee won't be cracked within the next 5 years, then good luck with changing her mind about this decision.

If she were me, I would just be plain tired. There's only so much a committee of one can do.

Seriously? There are already at least 2 published standards that can be used with little concern over being cracked any time soon when used properly. Theres absolutely no indication that SMIME or PGP are broken when using the proper algorithm and key sizes.

I think the point is that encryption is useless against someone that can say, "give us the key or we'll dissappear you."

Yeah that Snowden guy - totally dead now don't you know?Bradley Manning? Also dead. They killed him last week I think.Wait, neither of those people, who are guilty of really serious breaches are dead? That's just them trying to lull you into a false sense of security!

No Snowden fled to the only other countries big enough to make the US back down China then when they looked like the would hand him over soon He ran to Russia.Manning they tortured for months and threw in solitary confinement until they broke him, sentenced him in a kangaroo court tribunal then coerced him into apologizing, and finally they tried a homo smear campaign on him to discredit him.Then there is Assange who they got their allies to trump up charges to smear his reputation and is hiding in a embassy unable to leave without the black helicopters, black suvs and men in black suits whisking him away to parts unknown to have his naughty bit electrocuted.

1) It's HER site. If she does not want to continue, for whatever reason, it's HER choice. Disagree with her? Create your own Groklaw.2) Especially given the Lavabit precedent, I can understand her decision.

Remember: you may be secretly ordered to spy on your own users, and secretly prevented to even mention this to anyone - including your own lawyers - and threatened with criminal prosecution if you decide to do right thing and shut everything down. Big Brother wants to be able to watch you. All the time.

As for being a ''gutless coward'' (your words, not mine), try running a high-traffic, high-visibility web site for a while, with all the attendant legal problems and shenanigans (see above), and we will talk about it for while, mmmmmkay?

She'll always be remembered for the SCO battle. This doesn't mean that she needs to go on and fight this fight also. I wish she'd handed off the site to someone else rather than lock the doors but that's her decision.

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely,Ladar LevisonOwner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

He has also stated that he could be arrested for shutting down his site:

But I'm guessing it is not the technical privacy hurdles which have her against the ropes - it is the legal ones. If I make the most technically secure site in the world, but I am forced to secretly open the back door to some government official, secretly demanded under jackboot threat and penalty of imprisonment and the ruin of my life - what else do I do? If you are willing to let her destroy her life - why don't you offer to take over the administrative side of GROKLAW, rightfully refuse to comply and publish all the details, and we will all vocally support you as you are carted off to your new dungeon cell. It is her life, not just some abstract principled stand.

Welcome to 2013, the terrerists are still winning without having to lift a finger.

The terrorists won long ago and occupied the USA using outsourced forces, since their own numbers are so small. The terrorists surrogate army has outposts at every airport in the land reminding people constantly that their ability to travel freely is limited.

Apparently our freely-elected Constitutional government has succeeded in creating a critical mass of fear in the US. Real investigative journalism, what little there actually was, is now dead. We are therefore left with only state-approved information exchange.

Time for me to get my passport renewed and learn a new language. Fuck this country. I can get a job anywhere.

Time for me to get my passport renewed and learn a new language. Fuck this country. I can get a job anywhere.

And precisely where are you going to go? Name me another country that has less restrictions on free speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, right to property, and so forth. Everywhere you look there are governments that have it written right in their version of the Constitution that they can detain you, take your stuff, monitor everything you do or say...the list goes on and on.

You can say "I'm gonna move somewhere where they can't spy on me and arrest me for saying unpopular thing about the government" but I challenge you to find anyplace on the planet where that's guaranteed anymore. The US was the last bastion of this. If it's fallen, you're SOL.

For practical purposes, most western countries have strict privacy laws. They also have a healthy fear of secret courts and secret police.

While there are some three-letter agencies in Europe, their scope and reach is substantially limited.

It's always worth pointing out that the US (having less than 5% of the world's population) houses over 30% of the world's prisioners and takes people's freedom at a rate nearly double Russia and China and 10-16 times that of most of Europe.

Despite a similar framework of laws, this particular obsession, itself, belies a pretty specific and astounding obsession with authority and police that is unique among the world (except, maybe, in China).

This is also one of the myriad reasons I left the US for good several years ago. Good riddance.

There are actually people who attempt to measure this in an objective way. The results are interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_indexfreeexistence.org

It is perhaps coincidental that freedom indexes seem to track roughly with other prosperity indexes as far as the US is concerned, in that a couple of decades ago you could pretty much assume the US was right at the tip-top, but that ain't so true anymore.

No, he really isn't. Thirty years ago he would have been seen as, at the "leftist", a moderate Conservative.

The sad truth is "left versus right" stopped being a real thing in politics decades ago, today it's little more than the window-dressing espoused by politicians to keep us distracted while both sides push as hard as they think they can get away with towards a despotic government - the worst-case combination of the liberal and conservative viewpoints. The "liberals" claim to push towards big gov with big benefits, and "settle" for big gov. The "conservatives" claim to push towards small gov with small benefits, and "settle" for small benefits. Between them they have managed to create a monster while both sides can (with ever-decreasing plausibility) claim that that wasn't the intent.

How would fleeing the US help? Even the fig-leaf of privacy protection afforded to US citizens living at home is completely absent for those who live elsewhere, citizen or otherwise. As long as any component of the runs through the US, the US will continue to reap.

This is unprecedented that companies are folding in response to the abuses of the US government. It is not something to ignore and yet we still have anonymous cowards humping the legs of slashdot making sophomoric marginal comments. Keep up the good work AC. You truly are the lowest common denominator.

And I said nothing, because I am not a Lavabit user. Then they came for Groklaw, and I said nothing, because I don't visit Groklaw. Then they came for Slashdot, and I had one less platform to voice my outrage...

The revolution is here, though. And the streets will run red with tape.

The bankers and the politicians think they are safe because they've built prisons. They've built a militarized police. They've built an omnipresent spy machine.

It is a mighty machine indeed. Powerful! Terrible! You'd be mad to fight that machine! Who could?

But there is one, tiny, adorable little flaw in their design. Uh, what tells the soldiers in which directions to point their guns? What determines who occupies the prison cells? What determines whether the spy machine is listening to your pizza delivery calls rather than ferreting out bank fraud?

Why, it's just a piece of paper. It's just a law that says "defend bankers, gas protesters." All you have to do is change that law to say "prosecute bankers, defend protesters" and that machine turns right back around on its makers. Kind of a clever hack, eh?

Let's see, let's see how to change those laws...

Oh, look, the laws of my city, county, state and nation are right here on the Internet. And look, I have a text editor, too! I bet I can write better laws than a bunch of dickbags who failed kindergarten and slept through civics class. If I need some help, advice on wording, I wonder if there's anybody on the Internet who might help? And I bet if I tidied up the body of laws for my own town, removed the tax breaks for the golf course where the city council gets free memberships and used that money to fix potholes in the streets, people might actually vote for that! Only need a plurality. And I bet I can crowdfund some ads. Or FaceBook it. My grandma might Like it.

I'm working on this right now, and I can use some help.

It's basically Sourceforge for law. Get your laws. Fork them. Hack them. Vote on a release candidate before a general election and choose a random Installer to put on a ballot. Crowdfund money.

Turn it into a game. The US electoral district map is a game of Risk. Each unit has tax money and a militarized police force if you win it. Campaigns are just an MMO, with quests like "write 10 letters to the editor," "collect 100 FB likes for these laws," and raid bosses like "drive people to the polls." I'd love to get "haunches" in there somewhere. Oh well. Maybe collect 10 pictures of opposition candidates drunk or with their hair out of place. Dick pix = legendaries.

If anybody wants to help, I need:

Law hackers.

Foundation/community organizers.

Sourceforge for law (I'm hacking Allura now, but I've never used Python before)

Kickstarter for cash.

Memes to explain this to people.

Trolls to troll politicians.

Stackoverflow (law version) to help people write better laws

Secure online voting system.

It's all right there. Every tool we need is available for free online. We can repair the entire US government from our parents' basements in our pajamas, one district at a time.

We need not hide, we need not encrypt. We will occupy no streets, break no laws, have no secrets and be the very, very most obedient of citizens. Call it an "Open Government" maybe. Or New/America.

What this translates to isn't that Groklaw doesn't like what's happening to others and is shutting down out of protest.

It is that it has been served with a demand for information/wire-tapping along with an attached gag order, courtesy of the 'Star Chamber'. The only 'legally' safe way for organisations to tell people that something like this has happened is to shut down their operations.

So, translation of Groklaw's announcement: the NSA/FBI/TLA have copied our hard drives and installed a data logger in our data centre. Oh yeah, and we're not allowed to talk about it.

It is that it has been served with a demand for information/wire-tapping along with an attached gag order, courtesy of the 'Star Chamber'.

Do the gag also orders also order you to write 2000+ words of false information on why you're shutting down? Because if you're trying to hint that you're not allowed to talk about the reasons, inventing valid but false reasons would seem to be the wrong way to go about it.

The stunning abruptness of the shutdown and the discussion of Lavabit screams at me that she was hit with an NSA letter. There's no way PJ would yank the plug without warning like that on some whim. Even comments were disabled. If PJ simply wanted to retire the project she would have wound things down gracefully. She would have encouraged the community to stay active. She would have given the community time to look for alternatives. She would have encouraged someone else to take up the job running a successor site.

I saw nothing in her post that I would call "false information". If she got an NSA letter and didn't mention it, that does not make any of what she wrote untrue. If PJ got an NSA letter with a legal gag order, she would obey it to the letter. But that can't stop her from shutting down the site to refuse to participate, and she knows the community is smart enough to see how utterly out of character such an abrupt shutdown is.

First they came for the whistleblowers,But I was not a whistleblower.Then they came for the journalists,But I was not a journalist.Then they came for the lawyers,But I was not a lawyer.Then they came for me,And there was nobody left to defend me in court, write about my case or provide facts as to what had been done against all of us.

While I respect PJ and all she has done to bring light on the many legal issues of interest to/. and other internet users, I do not understand this decision. She seems to be implying that she fears that one day, maybe, she'll be forced to turn over a private e-mail, perhaps even an encrypted one and links that to the current NSA revelations. But that is a red herring - Groklaw has always been subject to subpoena for documents related to a criminal or even civil litigation. And anyone sending information to PJ knows the inherent security risks - PJ has no obligation to provide complete security, something that is impossible or at least nearly so. To the extent that PJ feels the current environment will discourage sources of information or her consultations with associaties, as others have pointed out, use strong encryption. Doing so will eliminate much of the creeped out feel she says she has about the possibility of emails to/from her being read by the government(s).

I don't know but I just feel a bit like PJ is being a drama queen on this one. Yes, there are concerns and nobody should be happy about the wholesale spying that is going on. But shutting down is going a bit over the deep end and I think sends the wrong message.

I think a lot of this is more a personal statement about the rule of law and constitutional protections in the US in general, rather than any specific risk to Groklaw itself. PJ has always been careful to emphasize that the rule of law is a process designed to ensure justice is achieved as much as humanly possible. It must be incredibly disillusioning to her to see this process break down so dramatically as it has in the case of the NSA and FISA. If the rule of law means nothing anymore, Groklaw serves no purpose, regardless of whether there is any direct impact to the site from the NSA monitoring.

Allow me to present two quotes I think are relevant. The first is from the
the Groklaw article referenced to in TFS.

Not that anyone seems to follow any laws that get in their way these
days. Or if they find they need a law to make conduct lawful, they just write
a new law or reinterpret an old one and keep on going. That's not the rule of
law as I understood the term.

The second is from a recent op ed piece from Charles Krauhammer. I
usually disagree with him on just about everything, but I read his
stuff anyway just to get a glimpse of the what the "other side" is
thinking. Nevertheless, I think he is spot on with the following:

Such gross executive usurpation disdains the Constitution. It mocks
the separation of powers. And most consequentially, it introduces a fatal
instability into law itself. If the law is not what is plainly written, but is
whatever the president and his agents decide, what's left of
the law?

So I thought: well time to delete my slashdot account, I don't need anyone tracing certain posts back to my email account, but guess what? Slashdot doesn't allow deletion of account!
That's more of a reason than ever to want to delete it IMHO.

If someone is reading all our (insecure) emails to and from a known "person of interest", such as, for example, a well-known web site, then they can build the kind of interconnection matrix that will lead them to the supporters and fellow-travellers of that website.

Were I a copyright maximalist, I would regard groklaw as a criminal conspiracy, and the centre of a matrix of criminals and fellow-travellers. Based on that, I'd then petition the communications security establishment for a (secret) order allowing me to identify the conspirators and their fellow-travellers for (equally secret) investigation, leading to either prosecution or private revenge...

You are missing the point. The point isn't that e-mail isn't a secure form of communication. The point is the NSA is capturing ALL of it and storing it in massive data stores. The NSA can search through ALL of the captured data at will. That US Federal government have the e-mails. There is really nothing in place that prevents the government from search through the stored data time and time again for years, except for some "rules".

The fact the government CAN search through your e-mails at will is what PJ is concerned about. She a very bright person. She's gone over the issue in her mind. She realizes all of the ramifications of the government capabilities of the NSA. And it scares the hell out of her. It's created a chilling effect on First Amendment rights. Lavabit, Circle Mail, Groklaw are just the first visiable causalities of this chilling effect on free speech. And it's going to get worse and worse as more people realize the full impact of what the Snowden leaks are telling us.

It was THE most important legal website on the internet covering SCO , Apple/Samsung Microsoft/Novell etc etcThe level of analysis and documenta on the site made it a unique tool and place to get information on litigation between the tech giants.This is where we followed the SCO owns Linux war against Novell et al . This is a terrible loss for all because the truth and documents was out there and we all participated and learned from it. It is a terrible loss for who are curious about their world and the workings of the legal system.I am in shock. I went there and spent thousands of hours on the site. I learned and owe the Lady in a Red Dress one hell of a lot.Thanks PJ . Forever in your debt.Ric